Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

9/11 and Muslims!

Tahir Aslam Gora, a Pakistani free thinker experienced everything I experienced. Many Muslims believe 9/11 has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims. They still like to believe a bunch of bizarre conspiracy theories.

It’s said that a majority of Muslims have been hijacked by a tiny percentage of Islamic extremists. But it’s also true that many Muslims consider the incidents of September 11, 2001, to have been staged by the Bush administration, the CIA, Jews, etc.

The question arises as to why a majority of Muslims would assume that nothing bad could be delivered by Muslims? And why have many Muslims related all bad things to the United States, other western countries and Israel?

Some of the answers by many Muslims to such questions:

The West and Israel did it to undermine the name of Islam
Muslims are not that high tech that they could have created such a catastrophe
The Bush administration did so to gain more control over Middle East resources, etc.

In order to justify such answers, they present Michael Moore’s or Robert Fisk’s conspiracy theories, or Noam Chomsky’s political philosophies.

Islamic extremists are the true Muslims, they strictly follow Islamic rules. Majority Muslims would have organized a mass movement against Islamists if they did not sympathize with them.

Religion stops a thinking mind. Without having a thinking mind, you can’t go beyond the conspiracy theories. Without a thinking mind, you justify all the violence against humanity in the name of something nonsense.

Illiterate Muslims get easily influenced by the Islamic extremists, but the literate Muslims get influenced by the leftist intellectuals who are the biggest apologists for political Islam.

The notion of majority Muslims being silent is difficult to grasp. They are, in fact, quite vocal, just not very clear. And if they are hijacked or distracted by the tiny extremist class, why is it so? Why are they so helpless in raising their voices? Do they even have their own voices? It doesn’t seem so, since they are distracted by that small percentage of Islamic extremists. There is a fear that Islamist points of view on various issues are close to their hearts.

Today on the eve of 11th anniversary of 911, someone from the same “silent majority” has written on Facebook, “Happy 11th anniversary of 9/11 attacks everyone… may Allah swt bring many more attacks on those coward terrorist American kuffar and other kuffar and their lapdog apostate allies around the world. May Allah swt help the Muslims, release our Prisoners… and give us victory. Ameen.”

This is not a good sign for this so-called silent majority. The silent majority is not supposed to be on the side of such hostile and violent views. It doesn’t matter if they agree with the West on each and every issue. What matters is they need to clear their thinking and rid their minds of conventional rivalry plans with the rest of the world.

I witnessed how Muslims in Bangladesh changed. In 60’s and 70’s, Muslims were secular and socialists. In 80’s, they started becoming conservative and religious because of the Islamization of the country. In 90’s, Islamists were given the power by military rulers. After 9/11, majority Muslims have become Islamists, they may not wear a beard or pray five times a day.
Some other Muslim countries, I believe, went through the similar going down process.

Comments

I myself can’t figure out what the deal is with the support of ‘political Islam’ by intellectuals. I’m absolutely sure that none of these intellectuals would want to live in a State where religion had any official governmental role. It’s an armchair belief they can support because they’d never have to live with the consequences of getting executed for disbelief in God or disrespecting some allegedly ‘holy’ book.

Most of that conspiracy theory horseshit is conjured up by pre-internet trolls and fed word-of-mouth to feeble-minded fools who will believe whatever garbage they are fed. The muslims are the weakest minded and most vicious of all the religious cretins, in my opinion. If there were a benevolent and all-powerful god then He/She/It (say that fast three times) would sure as hell miraculously appear to the faithful and wipe out of their brains all that phony baloney misinformation spread by the mullahs, the pastors, the priests, and all the other piety promoting con men. Not original, I’ll admit, but I just had to say (write) it.

Sad. I wish I could see a religion free world. I can’t help but think that if the whole world could try a NO RELIGION WEEK it would be so wonderful we would just stay like that. Your post makes me sad, the view of the muslims seems so bleak.

They [muslims] still like to believe a bunch of bizarre conspiracy theories.

Surely the most important thing about islam and other religions is that they are conspiracy theories- benevolent conspiracy theories, or so believers think, but still conspiracy theories. Isn’t there a quote from the quran about unbelievers plotting against god, but god being a better plotter? There’s a christian hymn which begins ‘God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.’
Given this, it’s almost certain that believers will believe other conspiracy theories- after all, if what you believe is obviously true and good and god is on your side, there must be some very nasty and underhand enemies fighting against you if you haven’t won already.